And I cannot stress this enough, nothing about this story has anything to do with Autism. Paranoid delusions are not a typical issue for Autistic people.

Agreed, but I am autistic and I have had this language used against me to argue why I shouldn’t be allowed to make my own decisions. I.e., it is a popular misconception and form of rhetoric that autistic people have paranoid delusions because we perceive the world differently. I brought it up because I’m arguing from my lived experience as a mentally ill and autistic person, i.e. I’m not just being an internet contrarian.

I did not mean to imply that autistic people typically do suffer from paranoid delusions. However, (at least in my view) we do suffer from neurotypical people believing we suffer from paranoid delusions.

encountering a vehicle like this and thinking “this guy just has different ideas than me, but is otherwise trustworthy” is not rational thinking.

I don’t have to find someone completely trustworthy in order for them to be an acceptable driver. Actually, I typically don’t fully trust the people I get in cars with. I only need to trust them enough to know that they’re not going to veer into traffic, they’re going to drive reasonably, and that they will take me to the place we promised to go. I think that the kinds of decisions that go into driving are completely different from those that drive a person to mark up their car.

Look, I understand the line you are trying to walk here

Yeah, I am trying to “walk a line” here and I think I understand where you’re coming from, so I’m absolutely willing to agree to disagree.